An important contribution to a serious discussion of profound life-and-death issues.
An examination of “our ongoing battle with aging, disease, and death.”
Notwithstanding the dramatic increase in life expectancy over the past century, death has become a taboo subject in polite society. “Never has death been as feared as it is today,” writes Warraich, a cardiology fellow at Duke University Medical Center who expresses the hope that his book will play a part in encouraging a more “honest and open conversation about death” among physicians and among patients and their family members. He explains how advances in the understanding of cellular functioning, coupled with improvements in end-of life treatment such as the ability to resuscitate people with cardiac arrest, have essentially blurred the line between life and death. Consequently, thorny new practical and ethical considerations have arisen regarding quality of life and the right to die: when is it appropriate to terminate the life of a patient in a vegetative coma? Does such a patient have a right to die? If so, who should be empowered to decide when life support should be terminated? Warraich describes how doctors are frequently forced to make such on-the-spot decisions for unconscious patients when relatives are unavailable and in instances where family members disagree. He explains that their training predisposes them to favor life extension even when the prospects of recovery are minimal. The author reviews the well-publicized case of Karen Ann Quinlan to illustrate the conflicts that may arise between doctors and relatives, and he takes an unflinching look at the problem for family caregivers when patients remain at the point of death for prolonged periods. This leads him to a compassionate consideration of physically assisted suicide, instituted when a patient expresses the desire to terminate his or her life rather than suffer a terminal illness. Warraich concludes this sensitive review of a painful subject with guarded optimism that a cultural shift toward open discussion is now occurring.
An important contribution to a serious discussion of profound life-and-death issues.Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-250-10458-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.
Known for her often contentious perspectives, New York Times opinion writer Weiss battles societal Jewish intolerance through lucid prose and a linear playbook of remedies.
While she was vividly aware of anti-Semitism throughout her life, the reality of the problem hit home when an active shooter stormed a Pittsburgh synagogue where her family regularly met for morning services and where she became a bat mitzvah years earlier. The massacre that ensued there further spurred her outrage and passionate activism. She writes that European Jews face a three-pronged threat in contemporary society, where physical, moral, and political fears of mounting violence are putting their general safety in jeopardy. She believes that Americans live in an era when “the lunatic fringe has gone mainstream” and Jews have been forced to become “a people apart.” With palpable frustration, she adroitly assesses the origins of anti-Semitism and how its prevalence is increasing through more discreet portals such as internet self-radicalization. Furthermore, the erosion of civility and tolerance and the demonization of minorities continue via the “casual racism” of political figures like Donald Trump. Following densely political discourses on Zionism and radical Islam, the author offers a list of bullet-point solutions focused on using behavioral and personal action items—individual accountability, active involvement, building community, loving neighbors, etc.—to help stem the tide of anti-Semitism. Weiss sounds a clarion call to Jewish readers who share her growing angst as well as non-Jewish Americans who wish to arm themselves with the knowledge and intellectual tools to combat marginalization and defuse and disavow trends of dehumanizing behavior. “Call it out,” she writes. “Especially when it’s hard.” At the core of the text is the author’s concern for the health and safety of American citizens, and she encourages anyone “who loves freedom and seeks to protect it” to join with her in vigorous activism.
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-593-13605-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2019
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